By Will Weissert, Associated Press
Washington (AP) – They often start the day as a low profile firm secretaries. They put an end to this way too, to God wants it.
But, when the rest of the government is gathered for a major event, such as the joint speech of President Donald Trump Congress on Tuesday evening, an appointed survivor is kept away to ensure that someone in the line of presidential succession remains alive.
Choose a failure in the event of a cataclysmic event that erases everyone dating back to the Cold War. He was dramatized in novels and an ABC series with Kiefer Sutherland which was broadcast from 2016 to 2019.
Being the real designated survivor brings additional adrenaline cuts and humiliating thoughts on the implementation of the presidency and the unthinkable tragedy – although the details of minute at minute generally do not include the high drama of fictitious representations, those which fulfilled the role.
“It concentrates your mind. This also improves your prayer so that it does not happen to you, “said James Nicholson, who was the veterans secretary of President George W. Bush and appointed the survivor of the 2006 state, to eventually become president after a cataclysmic event.
For the address of Trump, Doug Collins – who is the current secretary of the veterans of the administration – was chosen as designated survivor. The historian and journalist Garrett Mr. Graff said that the concept of designated survivor has long captured people because he combines the inherent fascination of the public for the danger and romance of a “man of everything” in the presidency.
“The idea of, you are only a random cabinet official, then something terrible happens and, all of a sudden, you are president of the United States,” said Graff, author of “Raven Rock: the history of the secret plan of the American government to save ourselves – while the rest of us die.”
Until September 11, 2001, the attacks, the designated survivors had more control over where they went outside of Washington. President Bill Clinton’s energy secretary, the late Bill Richardson, was chosen in 2000 and simply spent a weekend planned with his wife in Oxford, Maryland, a city by the water about 80 miles away, so he would be there during the union state.
When Dan Glickman, Clinton’s Secretary of Agriculture, was exploited in the state of the 1997 Union, his hometown of Wichita, Kansas, was too far, then he chose New York, where his daughter lived.
“I thought it was rather exciting. But I was not excited from a dangerous point of view, “said Glickman. “I don’t even think anyone told me to be careful.”
Alberto Gonzales, prosecutor general of Bush, was the survivor designated in the state of the Union of 2007. He said that the Chief of Staff of the White House, Josh Bolten, called a few days before and had given some options to know where he could be silent.
Gonzales chose to be in flight, and he arrived at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to find “members of each major department and agency” to ride with him. They transported thick binders filled with memos and protocol instructions, just in case.
He said there was a series of briefings that could have extended directly into Bush’s speech, which he watched since the air.
“It was at this time that it suddenly struck me, if something happened in the Capitol and everyone was killed, that I would be president,” said Gonzales. “It is somehow that gives to think. And you wonder, would I be up to an injured nation?
In “Raven Rock”, Graff details how the concept of designated survivor was formalized by the Carter and Reagan administrations in the middle of the fears that Soviet submarines right next to the Atlantic coast can draw nuclear missiles and destroy Washington with a warning barely 10 minutes.
From April 1980, the White House military office instructed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ensure the estate. An assistant was responsible for recommending that the president who should skip events when all possible successors were together outside the White House.
Officials are still preparing for an attack or a massive disaster. The military helicopter which collided with a regional jet outside the national airport of Reagan in January was on the continuity of the government’s mission – training to operate the federal government in the event of a disaster.
The first time that a member of the cabinet was kept away from a presidential speech at the congress was publicly disclosed, it was the secretary of education of President Ronald Reagan, Terl Bell, in 1981. But Bell was only identified after after.
Today, the television images of the house of the house allow political addicts to locate the member of the missing cabinet in a few minutes.
Nicholson said that Bush staff chief Andy Card asked him a few weeks before the Union’s state to assume the role. It was a natural adjustment since its agency played an important role in the continuity of government exercises because of its many national hospitals and clinics.
Nicholson stolen by helicopter to a destination only once in the air, and then sat in a command center, where he suffered information sessions before watching Bush’s speech.
It was served a “wonderful” dinner, prepared on the spot by the staff of the White House, although it did not remember if it was a T-Bone steak or a decrease coast or something similar. “It made you think that, at least, if this horrible thing happened, you would be well nourished,” he said.
“The enormity of this work. You are thinking of, far as it is, this is something you might have to do, “he said about becoming president. Nicholson’s wife attended the state of the Union, which means that if something happened, she could be among the victims, which only added to pressure.
When it was finished, Nicholson was not invited to fulfill his predecessor in the role, Gonzales, or future designated survivors.
“We don’t have a club,” he said. “We should.”
Glickman remembers climbing an Air Force G-3 from Andrews with secret service agents, a military official and a series of advisers who are not on his usual staff. A procession of three cars later transported him from Laguardia airport to his daughter’s apartment near Union Square in Manhattan.
She wanted to invite others to look at the speech with them, but Glickman nixed that. “It was not a party,” he said.
But it didn’t matter, however. Glickman said he was told that he didn’t need to dress, so he didn’t wear a suit. The instructions not to study are spared from reading briefing books or memorizing security protocols.
After the speech, the secret services asked if Glickman wanted to take a tour of the airport. He refused, saying that he was planning to dine with his daughter. It was missing when the procession left without him, making the taxis rare and the sudden return to real life particularly steep.
“I was the most powerful man on the face of the earth, theoretically,” recalls Glickman jokingly with his daughter. “And then I can’t even have a taxi.”
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
